Two physicists have come up with a theory as to why the Large Haldron Collider can’t seem to get the ball rolling…or the electrons crashing:

…the troubled collider is being sabotaged by its own future. A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.

In the early 90s, the US built the supercollider, which was also out to find the Higgs particle. After spending billions, the project was canceled, “an event so unlikely that [physicists call] it an ‘anti-miracle’” and claim this as further evidence of the future sabotaging efforts to find the Higgs.

On a sidenote: French police arrested a CERN physicist last week on suspicion of working with the N. African Al Qaida.

Via NYTimes Online